She did know what he meant and knew that he did have her best interests in mind. She couldn’t stay angry at Thomas for more than a few minutes without feeling guilty about something—not telling him she was seeing Dr. Berman again, not appreciating the amount of work he did around the house. “The dinner was wonderful tonight,” she said. “One of your best.”

“You thought so? I thought it was a little salty.”

“No. It was perfect.” Feeling light-headed and slightly nauseated, she snapped the lid on the container and put it back in the fridge. When she turned, Thomas was standing behind her, and he put his arms around her, tilted her chin up, and pecked at her mouth. “On you it tastes good,” he said.

She could feel her breasts and her thighs pressed up against the sticky warmth of his body and tried to pull back from him enough to get some air without looking as if she was rebuffing him. “I’m a mess,” she said. “I can’t stop sweating.”

“Horses sweat, women perspire, and you glow.”

“Is that Tennessee Williams?”

“A paraphrase of Orson Welles on the subject of Rita Hayworth.”

Oh please, she thought, please don’t get libidinous, not now, not tonight, not in this heat, not after the week I’ve had. She immediately started to long for a small, harmless explosion somewhere in the house, a pipe bursting perhaps, something that would take hours to fix and would extinguish whatever ardor Thomas was feeling.